Beauty Industry Promotional Effectiveness Benchmarks

Conversion rates for the beauty industry increased almost 4X for retailers using promotion.

Without promotions, conversions were 2.65% on average for the industry.

With conversions, that spiked to 6.60% on average.

The Beauty Industry itself had email capture rates noted at:

10.47% for Skin Care

5.2% for Beauty and Fitness

Above average engagement rates at 10.47% and 5.2% indicate that on-site visitors of this niche enjoy email marketing from these retailers.

This indicates that promotional marketing with the intent of email capture performs very well. Take the promotion below, for example.

Beauty Bridge offered 20% off for an email capture.

Promotions like this see up to a 16.2% conversion rate after opt-in for the beauty industry!

Jewelry Industry Promotional Effectiveness Benchmarks

Average Conversion rate: 1.04%

Conversion rate with promotion: 5.50%

Email capture conversion rate: 8.08%

The jewelry industry in ecommerce holds includes websites such as Watches.com and Fossil.

The average conversion rate for jewelry brands starts out fairly below average at 1.04%.

After the use of promotional marketing, conversion rates jump to 5.50% on average – a 4.45X increase.

The jewelry industry has email capture rates at 8.08%. Offer a discount promotion for lead capture increases this almost 6X.

This watches.com promotion in particular performed at a 13.9% impression to engagement rate, capturing thousands of emails during the BF/CM rush.

A common trend noticed during the BF/CM weekend is that the benefits of promotional marketing are only amplified by increased traffic and on-site visitors.

Home and Garden Promotional Effectiveness Benchmarks

Average Conversion rate: 1.04%

Conversion rate with promotion: 10.02%

Email capture conversion rate: 10.8%

The Home and Garden industry has a low base average conversion rate for non-engaged visitors at 1.40%.

However, the increase is significant post engagement with promotional marketing, jumping up to 10.02%!

That’s an 8.6X increase.

Here’s a quick example to really drive this vision home.

Half Price Drapes ran a promotion during the BF/CM time frame and saw a 10.8% engagement to conversion rate with a two-step mobile promotion.

The above promotion collected emails at a 17.54% engagement rate during the weekend, meaning almost 1 out of 5 visitors opted into the promotion for the possibility of an immediate conversion or later email lifecycle marketing.

Almost half of all purchases in this vertical are made in popular marketplaces such as Amazon.and eBay.

Promotional marketing helped leverage an increase in CVR from 2.19% to 7.25%, a whole 5 percentage points for the better.

Retailers in this space should leverage exit intent as well as contests to increase email sign-ups and immediate conversions.

Mentalfloss, for example, ran contest sign ups, a great promotional marketing tactic, to collect thousands of emails from on-site visitors.

Contests have the benefit of opening up the possibility of email lifecycle marketing (traditionally the highest form of ROI) as well as engaging a visitor that would otherwise bounce.

For the Clothing & Apparel industry, Email Capture Rate is an astounding 18.83%, making email popups a must have for retailers in this space!

Shopping & Large Marketplace Promotional Effectiveness Benchmarks

Average Conversion rate: 3.55%

Conversion rate with promotion: 8.62%

Email capture conversion rate: 16.14%

Shopping is a broad industry that encompasses websites such as Amazon, Etsy and large, general marketplaces.

If your store has a wide array of products, working off of the data presented in the Shopping industry would be a great step for you and your business.

The CVR change noticed with the use of promotional marketing was more than a 5% increase in conversions.

The Shopping industry itself already has a high CVR (3.55%) without the use of promotional marketing, but leveraging this tactic increases sales more than double!

With promotional efforts, conversion rate increased to 8.62%.

Popular retailer Serengetee leverages the use of contests alongside promotional marketing to engage potential customers and merge them into digital marketing workflows.

Email engagement rate for the Shopping industry was observed at 16.14% when interacting with an email popup.

Serengetee appeals to a younger audience, who are very receptive to email marketing, and benefits intensely from promotional marketing that focuses on supporting other digital marketing efforts such as email.

How Modern Consumers Shop Across Channels

Consumers shop on their own time, in their preferred channels and compare across stores and prices. Here’s everything you need to know from demographic shopping habits to how folks in the cities versus rural areas differ.

Sports & Outdoors Promotional Effectiveness Benchmarks

The increase in sales conversions after the use of promotional marketing is very significant in the sports industry.

Post engagement with promotions, accounts in the sport industry experienced an increase from 1.15% to 7.34%, a significant raise in what would be an otherwise average conversion rate.

Online retailers such as Gameday Sports Memorabilia leverage promotional marketing by way of ‘cart abandoner promotions’ to increase conversions.

Cart abandoner promotions are behaviorally triggered, based on when an on-site visitor attempts to leave the site with product in their cart, and factors such as cart value, specific products, etc.

Promotions then incentivize visitors to remain on-site and complete their purchase with an offering of some sort, in this case $20 is offered.

Utilizing a dollar amount instead of a percentage discount can often increase conversions due to consumer psychology, but as always, A/B testing your findings is recommended.

Pro Tip

A/B testing a flat dollar amount offering vs. a percentage discount can provide insight into what performs best for your audience.

Children’s Goods Promotional Effectiveness Benchmarks

Average Conversion rate: 3.58%

Conversion rate with promotion: 15.98%

Email capture conversion rate: 3.58%

Increase in CVR for the Children’s Shopping industry is very significant, with average CVR increasing from 3.58% all the way up to 15.98%.

A sharp difference in between normal CVR and an Engaged CVR can point to a promotion-receptive audience.

On-site visitors that are promotion receptive are actively looking for deals or incentivization, and when offered it, are much more inclined to complete a purchase.

Email engagement rates are at 3.58% for the Shopping/Children industry, so leveraging promotional marketing for email capture is a very viable strategy to build lists.

Popular website such as Robeez leverage email signup bars to incentivize visitors to exchange their emails for a percentage discount on an online order.

As examined previously, the Children’s Shopping industry is examined to have promotion-receptive visitors so the use of an email signup bar can open up opportunities for immediate and more ‘lifecycle’ conversions post purchase.

Executive Summary

Benchmarks such as this give you a window to work towards or applaud yourself for.

Your promotions, list building and email marketing are all important strategies to building your customer base, your repeat customer list and your online community.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Harry from the Justuno dev team for helping to pulli so much insightful data! He ran a ton of SQL queries to really hone the data in. This wouldn’t be possible without you!

Don’t see your industry listed here? Tweet us at @justunosocial and ask for some insights!

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Ben works as a Demand Marketing Specialist at Justuno, where he applies his love of copywriting and brand stories to create marketing pieces that impart value to online retailers. He's a firm believer in data to help entrepreneurs build their brands, and ecommerce managers and marketers build their careers. He is a lover of IPAs, indie-rock and marketing. Some call him a millennial in denial.